[rescue] Help with SunFire V240 Server

[microcode at zoho.com]

On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 05:25:06PM +0200, Andrew Gaylard wrote:

> When installing, you must "boot cdrom - text" (I think).

That sounds familiar but I can't remember, I've done a bunch of SPARC and x86
installs and they all run together. I seem to remember having to choose
option 3 or 4.

> I guess if you don't have a framebuffer, the installer will be in
> text-mode anyway.

All my SPARC installs are over serial. I can't remember if I just boot cdrom
or use the text option but he'll figure it out soon enough if he doesn't see
the option he wants.

> I use the latest openoffice.org from
> https://adfinis-sygroup.ch/aoo-solaris-sparc

Thanks, I'm checking this link now. I need a more recent copy than what I
found on OO's archives.

> I have downloaded the Sun Studio compiler, but haven't tried it;
> gcc has always "just worked" for me.

Not surprising given 99.9% of apps seem to be written for Linux. Still, most
stuff builds easily on Solaris with Studio after you set CFLAGS and
occasionally LDFLAGS. One notable exception is git. 

> Does someone have any info (URLs, etc) showing if it really is faster, and
> by how much?

It seems pretty obvious to me Solaris Studio would be faster on SPARC, just
like Intel's compilers are faster on Intel chips. Why would anybody think
gcc is faster or better at anything? The main value seems to be it's free as
in beer and pervasive.

I've seen comments on Studio's SPARC code generation superiority in a
bunch of places, notably the Postgresql notes on building for Solaris
SPARC. But there's so much I don't like about gnu/gcc that I don't really
need an excuse to use anything else I can find. If I wanted to use gnu or
gcc anything I'd be running Linux instead of Solaris. Studio (and Solaris)
actually has real, professional doc and like I said, a nice debugger
GUI. Studio is what Solaris is built with, so it's certainly good. There are
advantages over anything else because of that, obviously, on that platform.

> I'm pretty sure that the XVR-x00 graphics cards should "just work".

+1